Indications That Your Kid Is A Sports Fanatic

But it occurs to me that my 10 year old son is quickly over-taking me as the resident sports fanatic in my house.

Here are the 3 main indicators that have led me to this conclusion:

#1– This morning I came downstairs to find Evan watching TV. You know what he was watching, of his own free will mind you?

Girls college bowling.

Depauw Vs. Indiana I believe.

I said, “Evan, What are you doing, pal?” Nothing but silence and the glazed over look of a 10 year old basking in the warm glow of Mama television.

Now I know how Anne feels when she tries to talk to me during football season.

8 minutes later when he realized I was standing there he said, “Watch this girl Dad. She’s totally gonna pick up this spare.”

When she did, Evan jumped up in the air and started whooping and hollering like he had money riding on it or something.

If girl’s college bowling is just as compelling as the NBA playoffs, then clearly you’re a sports fanantic.

#2– Last weekend Anne and I took the kids on a quick outing to a neighborhood park that offered a variety of standard park fun things like slides and swings and sand boxes and monkey bars.

We hadn’t been there 10 minutes when I looked around and didn’t see my son anywhere.

“Any idea where Evan is”, I asked Anne?

The wife pointed over to the basketball courts and there was my son standing at the foul line looking up at the rim in earnest concentration.

Since we didn’t bring a basketball, Evan was shooting small pebbles at the hoop completely undisturbed by the fingernails on chalkerboard pinging sound of rocks bouncing off a metal backboard.

If throwing pebbles at a basketball hoop is more enjoyable than slides, swings and monkey bars, then clearly you’re a sports fanatic.

#3– And finally, when I went into my son’s room to say good night last evening, he was laying on his bed reading a book. I know what you’re thinking: “A-ha! He’s reading! Clearly he’s not the sports fanatic you make him out to be!”

But stay with me here.

Instead of pajamas, he was wearing what looked like a pair of those Mark Wahlberg boxer briefs but visually speaking, something seemed a tad off.

Upon closer inspection, I realized that my son wasn’t wearing underwear to bet but rather a pair of baseball sliding shorts with 1 tailbone and two hip pads inserted into their proper places.

He may have been wearing his cup too, but at that point, I figured if he was that committed to the idea there wasn’t much I could say anyway.

If you willingly sacrifice comfort in order to wear your sliding shorts to bed just in case you need to steal home in your dreams, then clearly you’re a sports fanatic.

If anyone can tell me how to get my wonderful son to be even half as passionate about multiplication tables and word problems as he is about sports, I’d be much obliged.